PUNE — Praveen Goyal spent days in the ICU after police arrested his daughter. The shock nearly killed him. Now he says if Siya is convicted of pushing her fiancé off Lohagad Fort, she should be pushed off the same fort.
“I still find it impossible to believe my daughter could do something like this,” Goyal told India Today TV. He admitted the allegations still don’t make sense to him.
Yet he called for the harshest possible punishment, without delay, if a court finds her guilty. The stakes here are brutal. A father is publicly demanding the death of his own child.
Not in anger. In grief.
In disbelief. He is a man torn between what police say happened and what he thought he knew about his daughter. Siya Goyal, 25, stands accused of murdering Ketan Agarwal, her fiancé.
Police allege she and an accomplice named Chetan planned the killing together. Investigators say Siya refused to call off the engagement. She feared bringing shame to her family.
So, according to police, she plotted a murder instead. Her mother, Pooja Goyal, rejects any suggestion the family saw trouble coming.
She said there were no warning signs. The couple video-called each other. They met regularly.
They appeared happy. To prove Siya was willing to marry Ketan, Pooja pointed to the money spent on wedding shopping and a pre-wedding trip to Bali.
The Goyal family also denied allegations from Ketan’s father that they hid facts. Praveen described his daughter as simple. Excited about her wedding.
A girl who, he insists, could not do what police say she did. But here is the contradiction at the heart of this case. Praveen cannot believe the charges.
He said so himself. Yet he demands the maximum penalty if she is convicted.
That penalty, in his view, should mirror the crime. Push her off the same fort. Let gravity do the rest.
This is not a father defending his daughter. This is a father surrendering her to the law before the law has finished its work.
He is pre-emptively accepting a verdict that has not been reached. He is saying the punishment should fit the crime, even if the crime is one he cannot fathom. The investigation into Ketan’s murder remains ongoing.
Police have not disclosed the full evidentiary picture. No trial date has been set. Siya is presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
Her father’s public call for the harshest penalty changes none of that legally. But it changes the atmosphere around the case.
What is at risk here is not just one woman’s life. It is the idea that a parent can separate love from justice. Praveen Goyal is trying to do that.
He is failing. He loves his daughter.
He believes she is innocent. And he wants her dead if she is not. That is a position no parent should have to take.
That is a position no parent should be put in. The case has drawn intense scrutiny because of the alleged crime. It will draw more because of the father’s words.
Pooja Goyal said the couple appeared happy. She pointed to the Bali trip.
The wedding shopping. The video calls. She is trying to rebuild a picture of a normal relationship.
Police are tearing that picture down. Praveen is standing in the middle, caught between what he wants to believe and what he is willing to accept.
He ended up in the ICU after the arrest. The shock of it. The weight of it.
He is still standing. Barely. And he is saying things no father should ever have to say.
